500 GB Hard drive almost full, can't figure out why???

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Level 1

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500 GB Hard drive almost full, can't figure out why???

I have a 500GB hard drive on my MacBook Pro and it appears that I only have 66GB of free space left. This is not possible! I can only account for approximately 100GB of memory used. Where could the missing 333GB possibly be? Please Help!

MacBookPro7,1, 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

Posted on Apr 1, 2011 1:38 PM

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Answer 1

iVmichael

Level 6

13,740 points

Apr 1, 2011 2:51 PM in response to Bucari

Grab a copy of Disc Inventory X or WhatSize and they will show you what's using up all the space and can be deleted.

You may have archive and cache files or left over images from burning that's using the space or, possibly, some run away application or process is creating huge log files ... See what they show and if you're not sure what to delete or why it's being created post again.

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Answer 2

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Apr 1, 2011 4:52 PM in response to Bucari

See [Where did my Disk Space go?|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/DiskSpace.html].

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Answer 3

David S.

Level 7

20,636 points

Apr 1, 2011 4:59 PM in response to Bucari

Have you been working in iMovie at all?

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Answer 4

Apr 1, 2011 9:24 PM in response to Bucari

Clear caches, cookies, run disk permissions repair, boot into safe mode. At the least, you will speed up your mac.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFjR0X4FRPg

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
How to video

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Answer 5

Bucari Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 3, 2011 5:30 PM in response to Bucari

Thanks for the responses!

I stand corrected, my HD is only 250gb. For some reason under my user account it says the capacity is 499.63gb?

I ran Disk Inventory and under my user account there is a .sparseimage file and it is occupying 154gb. This is still far more than I can account for.

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Answer 6

cjvdhx

Level 1

55 points

Apr 3, 2011 5:38 PM in response to David S.

Why do you ask that? Is there something about iMovie we should know about?

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Answer 7

iVmichael

Level 6

13,740 points

Apr 3, 2011 6:20 PM in response to Bucari

The sparseimage file exists because of FileVault (System Preferences/Security) - it's an encrypted copy of your Home folder. If you don't require this then turn it off and the image should go at next reboot.

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Answer 8

Bucari Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 3, 2011 7:00 PM in response to Matt_Moore

It worked...after following the video it cleared up about 40gb of space. Pretty much the amount I was missing!

Thanks!

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Answer 9

Bucari Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 3, 2011 7:03 PM in response to iVmichael

I'll try turning File Vault off as well. Thanks for the advice!

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